I'm searching my husband's polish ancestry and finding folks has been, well, interesting due to the crossed L in the last name. Over the last year I've found records with Mendygrał, Mendygral, Mendygrat (I assume the T came from the look of the crossed L), Mandygral, Mendigrow (maybe due to pronunciation of crossed L), and now Mendrygal.

I have only traced as far back as his great grandfather Ludwik Mendygrał (1889-1975) from Gnojnica/Ropczyce. I haven't been able to find with any certainty Ludwik's siblings or parents. I've only found one transcripted record that shows parents as 'Jozef Mendygral' and 'Katazyna Skiba' but can't find anything that would match them date-wise. There seem to be two main groups of Mendygrals in the US today, one batch in the Midwest and the other in Pennsylvania. At some point it appears that most dropped the ł and just went with l. There are a few in Michigan who are listed as Mendygrat with a T. I'm assuming Mendygrał is not a very common last name even in Poland? Is the MENDRYGAL l found indeed a separate last name or is this another misspelling that I will always need to check as well when searching records?

I can help you a little with the spelling of the surname. You are quite right, the crossed L does make it difficult when people are unfamiliar with this letter of the Polish language. It does come out as a T when some indexers transcribe the name, but the family themselves would certainly not have spelled it that way. They would likely have changed it to a plain L when anglicizing it. What you might not realize is that you MAY have a second "special" letter in the name. The "en" is almost certainly an E with hook: Mędygrał . It is a very rare name in Poland. There is a website (but it is in Polish) that shows the number of people in Poland who used particular spellings of names as derived from the 1990 census there. It is http://www.herby.com.pl/indexslo.html and it shows 45 people named Mędygrał and 93 with the spelling Medygrał and 197 using Mendygrał. To me, these are all the same name, originally. Poland has a population of about 39 million people, to give you a point of comparison. To answer your question about Mendrygal, it seems to me to be Mędrygał which is another surname. I think your best bet, when searching, is to use "wildcards" when the database allows it.
Best of luck in your search,
Sophia

Thank you, Sophia. That is so interesting! I had no clue the E/EN might be any different. I actually came across the website you mentioned after finding it on the forums here yesterday- of course I was only searching with the different L's. I kinda figured it was going to be a rare name anyway after finding just a handful of folks in Warsaw. Seems to be no one left in the Ropczyce area anymore. I'll be interested in seeing how the E/EN might change my search.

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